Indic scripts, such as Devanagari, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Bengali, Assamese, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil, use ligatures (also called conjuncts), which are letters formed from a combination of two or more basic letters. The shape of the ligature may, or may not, give clue to the constituting letters. For example, the Roman ligature æ indicates that the constituting letters are “a” and “e”. Similar Devanagari examples include (+) and (+). The Devanagari ligatures (+) and (+), however, do not give a clear hint that the constituting letters are  and 
The numerous Indic ligatures are not generally assigned separate keys on a keypad; instead users need to build ligatures from the constituting basic letters. Thus, ligatures are difficult for users to access. Additionally, dominant Indic script standards do not promote intuitively typing ligatures in Indic languages. For example, the keypress sequence and display output for creating the ligature  in Devanagari using the Unicode standard can be unsettling for new users. A user would first select (Ka), which would result in the letter (Ka) on the display screen. Then, a user selects (Virama, also called Halant), which results in the character (Ka with explicit virama) on the display screen. Finally, the user presses (Ra), and the  on the display screen is replaced by the ligature .
Note that after selecting the (Virama), an explicit virama appears with the preceding consonant on the display screen, but after pressing the (Ra) key, the explicit virama disappears and the ligature  appears on the screen instead of the previous character . This manner of requesting something you don't want (an explicit virama) to get to something you do want (a ligature) is not intuitive to a user.
Additionally, if a user wanted to create (Ka with explicit virama-Ra), it would be frustrating to see a (Ka with explicit virama) disappear after typing in a (Ra). In fact, the Unicode script standard requires the entry of an additional non-visible character code (zero width non-joiner) in order to obtain . Also, it would be very difficult for a user to create (half character Ka-Ra); most attempts would result in the ligature . The  requires a different non-visible character code (zero width joiner).
The Indic Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) standard is similar to the Unicode standard in that sometimes a user must select a virama key and see an explicit virama on a display in order to obtain a ligature that does not include an explicit virama. For the ligature , the keypress sequence and display is the same for the ISCII standard as the Unicode standard. For the character , a user selects the virama twice to maintain the explicit virama after the Ka: +++=. Selecting a virama twice, however, is not an intuitive action.
There is a desire to provide an intuitive method for building ligatures from constituent basic characters. Also, there is a desire for appropriate visual feedback when building ligature characters. The various aspects, features and advantages of the disclosure will become more fully apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon careful consideration of the following Drawings and accompanying Detailed Description.